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Fiksu: Getting a loyal app audience has reached the $4 threshold

Spending on mobile advertising to attract an app customer with staying power has reached an all-time high of $4, according to Fiksu. The company's App Store Competitive Index, which tracks the average aggregate daily downloads of the top 200 free iOS apps, looks at the cost per loyal user (CPLU) on a regular basis. It also publishes a Cost-Per-Install (CPI) Index that looks at initial user acquisition costs.

The CPLU Index rose to an all-time high of $4.04 in August, representing a 36 percent increase month-over-month and 117 percent rise year-over-year.

The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index, which tracks the average aggregate daily downloads of the top 200 free iOS apps, rose to 8.1 million -- an 8 percent increase since July and 53 percent year-over-year.

The Cost Per Install Index (CPI) on iOS dipped to $1.32, but represented an increase of 26 percent since last year.

On Android, CPI decreased to $1.91, dropping 30 percent since last month but increasing by a whopping 103 percent year-over-year.

"With the release of iOS 9 and the new iPhones, we expect continued dominance of apps and growing opportunities to show advertisements to users," the report said. "Though the industry is abuzz with concerns surrounding ad blocking, for the most part, this won't have much impact on mobile marketers since ad blocking is applicable solely to mobile web traffic. However, as ad blocking apps rise to the top of the App Store charts, it's clear the popularity of the concept amongst users is rising."

It may be a little early to dismiss the long-term impact of ad blocking technology, but if nothing else, Fiksu's data shows competition for app customers continues on an upward trajectory. Developers might want to use this data and look at whether the cost of getting users amid an iPhone launch is merely a spike or more of a long-term trend. If so, they'll either need to start putting aside more money for marketing purposes, or hope that they get the kind of word-of-mouth reviews that work even better than mobile advertising.

Related articles:
Fiksu: Cost of getting loyal app users went up 30% in June
Localytics: 75% of app users will churn within 90 days
Adobe: 50% of an app's total life span occurs within six months of an install